fhould remember at the fame time, that you have not loft him for ever: far otherwife he is gone before you but a little while to the abodes of celeftial Amity, where he ardently expects you to follow him, where he will welcome your arrival with infinite pleasure, and where you shall unite once more, beyond the poffibility or the fear of a fecond feparation. It is true, you beheld him overwhelmed with ficknefs, and agonizing with pain: that face, which you had often contemplated with particular fatisfaction as the picture of his mind, grew pale and ghaftly: thofe eyes that were wont to melt at the tale of woe, or the fudden touch of a generous idea, to fmile with the fweet emanations of a kind and complacent heart, or to radiate with. the peculiar luftre frequently attendant on fenfe and fpirit, thofe very eyes you saw elofed on the world, and on you: yes, and the foul, the beloved and the loving foul, that often affifted yours to mount, is fled to its native dwelling; and you are bereft of its infpiration. Tears will fometimes flow, while bufy memory is recalling the mournful scene; and let them flow they are the tears of fenfibility and virtue. Your Saviour wept for his Friend Lazarus. But while his pattern warrants your grief, his promises confole it: your tears are tempered by refignation, or rather exalted to rapture, when you reflect that He is the refurrection and the life," and that, in the magnificent train of his followers whom he fhall raise up at the Jaft day, you will find your lamented yet happy Friend, brightened into a higher form of being and enjoyment. But who can describe the gratulations, that will pafs between triumphant fpirits, formerly joined by the pureft ties, on their rejunction in the facred and indiffoluble bond of perfection? Will it not be wonderfully pleafing, to witnefs the graceful modefty, with which they afcribe to each other's influence a principal portion of the bliss they enjoy, while they look forward with reciprocal transport to the landscape of ever-blooming and ever-growing felicity, that opens before them in thofe friendly regions? It has indeed been queftioned, whether good men will thus recognize one another hereafter? But to imagine that they will not, were to reprefent their condition in Heaven as lefs complete than it is on earth; would infer the annihilation of thofe ideas, fentiments, and fympathies, by means of which they are attached to certain characters and perfons here, whom they prefently know and easily distinguish from all others; and were actually to fuppose, that all those finer discriminations, and dearer intercourfes, of the heart, which have ever been numbered among the divineft pleafures of this life, and the fureft proofs of elevated understanding and affection, will ceafe in another; that our intellectual faculties, and moral propenfions, will at least have objects totally different from fome of the noblest that now engage them ; that the bodies we fhall receive at the refurrection will bear no refemblance to those which we wore in the days of Nature; in fhort, that all the peculiar and diftinctive features which mark and diverfify the minds of the best people here below, and are often confpicuous in their countenances, will be erafed, and the particular regards we now feel for their respective virtues abforbed in the less interefting, and therefore less delightful, efteem of general excellence. But are these things probable? Are they confiftent with that great principle of analogy which appears to be a fundamental law of the Supreme Government? Would they not disappoint, in some measure, the expectations which the worthieft fpirits of all ages and countries have been difposed to indulge, on the fubject of future rewards, as adapted to a community of bleffed beings, who were formerly linked together by various mental combinations, and characteristic tendencies? Expectations fo univerfal, and fo perpetual, could only be prompted by the conftitution of Nature; they could not be the refult of incidental or partial refinement. It is not truer, that they were entertained by the politeft philosophers of antiquity, than that they are found at this day among the wildeft favages of different nations. It is a way of thinking in which we are ftrongly fupported by Revelation. There we are taught to believe, that the scenes which have taken place in this probationary state will be recalled to memory in the period of future recompences; without which, indeed, I fee not how thofe recompences could be diftributed to moral agents with the leaft propriety. But will not fuch recollection neceffarily lead to that of our |